


Tiny Face (As You Are)

by 11oyd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Damaged Bucky Barnes, Established Relationship, M/M, PTSD, Panic Attack, Steve POV, bossy bucky, tender Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6897997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11oyd/pseuds/11oyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Go over there,” he’ll say for no apparent reason and Steve will walk with a bemused expression towards the opposite side of the room. Bucky will look almost fiercely delighted in the power he has over Steve and he’ll point with his metal arm to a different area. “Now there.” And Steve will go.</p><p>“Pick this up,” Bucky will say, and Steve will, he’ll hold anything Bucky wants for hours, waiting patiently until Bucky decides to have him set it down again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiny Face (As You Are)

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from a song by Will Currie which is no lie, the best steve/bucky song in the world. go listen to it now & forever.

Bucky at this point in his life has two moods.

Bucky from the before used to have endless moods - and Steve could list and categorize all of them, adjusting his own mood in relation to however Bucky seemed to be feeling at the time. He grew up with all of them, touched all of them, learned all of them and how they looked at night and how they worked in the morning, memorizing the words and tones and expressions that went with each. There was flirty Bucky who always dragged Steve to dances, sullen Bucky who slouched in his seat, inquisitive Bucky who questioned the stars and their purpose and read to Steve aloud from his sci fi mags and dreamed about the future - and Steve, god help him, loved every Bucky, every damn one of them.

Today though, now, with the war over and Bucky safely living in the Avengers Tower, Steve can only catch onto two moods: bossy and terrified.

Except the only person he seems to boss around is Steve.

"Go over there," he'll say for no apparent reason and Steve will walk with a bemused expression towards the opposite side of the room. Bucky will look almost fiercely delighted in the power he has over Steve and he'll point with his metal arm to a different area. "Now there." And Steve will go.

"Pick this up," Bucky will say, and Steve will, he'll hold anything Bucky wants for hours, waiting patiently until Bucky decides to have him set it down again.

"Put this on," he says, holding out a sweater. It's too small, but Steve does it anyway, carefully putting it on so that it doesn't rip as it stretches against his chest. Bucky just looks at him, standing there with his expression blank, and then nods. "Okay," he says.

"Okay?" Steve asks.

"Okay," says Bucky.

He'll do whatever Bucky asks of him, anything in the goddamn world. He thinks about Bucky telling him in that flat voice to walk up to the top of the Tower and just jump off the top and he thinks he might genuinely do it. Well, not really because someone needs to stay around and protect Bucky, but a part of him would at least consider it. There's this moment each time he does something that Bucky tells him to do where Bucky's eyes will glimmer and the corner of his mouth will twitch up in satisfaction, where he'll look at Steve, _really look_ , and it feels like Steve's accomplished something. Sometimes, if Steve is truly lucky, Bucky will smirk, looking all for the world like a satisfied little shit at telling Steve _Drink this_ and watching Steve drink old milk. But then, just as quickly, the look will flatten out again and Steve will be left frustrated, reeling, trying to obey as much as he can.

"Have you noticed it?" Steve asks Natasha as they spar together. Bucky's already in the shower after fighting Clint vigorously, otherwise Steve wouldn't risk him overhearing with his super soldier hearing.

Natasha aims for his right side and then moves down instead, sweeping his feet out from underneath him. He grips her waist as he falls, flipping her with him, and then they both separate and get to their feet, eying each other.

"Noticed what?" she says.

"His bossiness," he says. He kicks out, hits her thigh, spins, catches her by the shoulders and tries to flip her again but she's too fast. She's got her thighs up around his neck somehow - how does she always manage to do that? - and he falls down to the floor hard, hoping she'll dislodge. She doesn't, just squeezes tighter.

"He's pretending," she says, looking down into his face as it slowly turns red. He paws at her legs, twisting underneath her but she only folds over him and grips harder, cutting off his air.

"Nat -" he gasps.

"Conceed."

He gives a jerky nod and then she's off him in a flash, standing over him and offering him a hand up. It takes him a moment to accept, breathing hard, and then they're standing together like nothing ever happened. "What's he pretending about?" he asks, rubbing his neck.

She sighs. "He wants to pretend he's in control. Maybe it cements in his mind that he doesn't have a handler any more, if he's the one giving the orders, even pointless ones. Maybe it's about trust."

He gives her a slanted smile. "Sorry I always come to you for ex-assassin advice, Nat."

Natasha's expression lightens just a little. "It's okay. I wish someone had done it for me." Her hand comes up to touch his face, palm to cheek, and he almost closes his eyes but he doesn't want to miss the tender look in her eyes. "How long are you going to let him push you around?"

He looks over to the entrance to the locker room and sees Bucky exiting, his hair falling wet and long around his face, and steps back so that Bucky won't see Natasha's hand pressed to his face like that. He doesn't look away from Bucky as he says, "Forever, if I have to."

Later that night, Bucky says, "Don't move," just as Steve is coming into the living room, and Steve stops. Bucky walks right up to him, studying him, checking his form, and then reaches and brings Steve's arms down to his side one by one. He tilts Steve's head like he's a painter positioning his model and then smooths his hand over Steve's hair. It's the most he's touched Steve since coming to live with him in four months and it makes Steve's heart feel heavy in his chest. "Don't move," he says again quietly and then leaves, brushing past Steve on his way out.

He thinks maybe Bucky will come back in five minutes or ten. Maybe Bucky just wants to see how long Steve can go without moving - or if Steve will obey even when Bucky's not in the room. Is Bucky watching him somehow, waiting to see how long it takes for Steve to crack?

Steve steels his jaw and waits.

There were hundreds of Buckys in the past, changing within minutes or hours. That was what Steve was used to - flighty, exciting Bucky Barnes who could be heartbroken one instance and then happy again the next.

"It's so easy for you to change how you feel," Steve had said once, laying in bed next to Bucky. They were half-dressed in the sweltering heat, and Steve knew that if he wanted to he could lean up and kiss Bucky hotter. That never changed, no matter what mood Bucky was in. "You're different all the time."

"Can't keep up, Rogers?" asks Bucky, grinning. He'd just been ranting about their upstairs neighbor O'Malley a minute ago.

"Hurts my head," he complained. "Just pick one and stick with it!"

Steve closes his eyes now, the only part of him that moves. Two moods. He has two moods now. He tells Steve what to do, and he hides.

Time is slow, locked in his own head like he is now. There's nothing to do, no part of him to move. His old body would have collapsed after an hour of standing like this, his knees would have been screaming, but now his body stays as still and straight as a statue, marble. Is this what Erskine meant for him? Is this why he was given this body, to prove to Bucky that he could obey anything he commanded? His old body would be swaying right now, lightheaded, but Steve stands strong. He breathes deep. Two hours pass. Three. He's become nothing more than his lungs breathing and his fingertips pressing lightly against his pants. He wants to sit, but he doesn't, because Bucky told him not to.

 _I love you,_ he thinks. _I love you_.

He doesn't move.

Bucky comes back after five hours of Steve simply standing in the entrance to the living room. He comes up behind Steve, standing there, and Steve is hyperaware of his presence. After five hours of nothing, this feels enormous. Every thought in his head seems to echo back and forth in the stillness.

"Good," says Bucky after a moment. His voice is hoarse. He comes around to look up at Steve, his eyes wet as he looks at him. Steve wants so badly for Bucky to touch him, just a single brush of skin against skin, but he knows Bucky won't. "That's good. Thank you."

"Can I move?" Steve asks.

Bucky tilts his head. "Would you like to move?"

"I want what you want," Steve says honestly.

Bucky lets out a slow breath like he's surprised. His entire body shudders, including the metal arm. "I don't," he says. "I don't know. I don't know." He jerks his head, then brings his hands up to his face like a child. "I don't know."

"Hey, hey," says Steve quickly and he breaks his stillness at last, moving forward and putting his arms around the other man. He pulls him to his chest, holding him close, pressing his face into Bucky's hair. This is the second mood. "Bucky, it's okay. It's okay, just breathe."

"I, I," says Bucky, hyperventilating into Steve's shirt.

The second mood is terror. It's Bucky waking up in the middle of the night, it's Bucky freezing in the middle of a practice fight and just shutting down, it's Bucky finding the closet.

"Tell me what to do," Steve says gently, still holding Bucky. "Come on."

"I," says Bucky, and then seems to harden himself, dragging in a hard breath. "Lay down. You."

Steve pulls back, blinking, and then at Bucky's shaken look, slowly gets to his knees and then to his back. Bucky looks jittery, frayed at the edges. "No," he says. "On your side."

Steve turns, laying on his side so that his front is towards Bucky, and then Bucky steps over him and looks at him the other way. "Smaller," he orders, angrily. Steve tries to shrink himself, curling in and regretting his body mass. He hears Bucky shift back and forth and then suddenly he's up behind Steve like he always used to do when they were in their old apartment in Brooklyn. Bucky had always been behind him, always, and Steve had imagined that if they did it again, perhaps he'd be the one to be in the back, being the bigger one now.

He's glad it's this way though.

Bucky presses him hard into Steve like he's trying to envelop him, his arm going around his waist and hugging him tight like he can make Steve smaller by will alone. "Please," he says.

"I'm here," Steve says.

"Smaller," Bucky begs.

"I'm trying," he says, and feels his heart breaking.

It's a long time before he feels Bucky stop shaking behind him.

The closet is the worst part of Bucky's terror mood. Steve hadn't even known it'd existed before one day Bucky had flown into a terrified screaming fit and then found it, disappearing inside and closing the door behind him.

Steve feels his eyes well up just thinking about it.

"What are you doing?" he had begged, clawing at the door as he tried to pull it open. "Let me help you, Bucky!" He could feel the other man holding the door shut with all his strength from the inside. What was he doing? Why did he want to be in there? A moment before, Bucky had looked at him wide-eyed with fear, his entire body tremoring all because Steve had said, " _At daybreak, it'll already be like a furnace outside with this heat wave_."

Feels like panic right now. Feels like Steve's heart is going to burst out of his chest with the noise Bucky is making in the closet - a high-pitched whining noise, like an animal. He grits his teeth and wrenches, jerking the door open so hard the handle comes ripping out of the wood and suddenly Bucky is before him, pressing back inside the depths of the small closet.

"Just freeze me again," Bucky says, whimpering. "Just please, make it stop. Freeze me, please, please," and he backs into the closet and hunches down, crying.

Steve, horrified, realizes that the closet is the closest thing Bucky could find to the tank, and feels his stomach drop to the floor.

He doesn't understand it, why would Bucky want that? What could ever possibly trigger him badly enough to make him want that? He feels so lost and confused when it comes to the healing process Bucky is going through. Four steps forward, fourteen back.

He turns now, slowly enough that if Bucky wanted him to stop he could make him, and then looks at him, his face so close. "I will do anything you tell me to do," he says. "Anything, Buck. Just say the word."

Bucky closes his eyes, leaning forward until his forehead touches Steve's. "Don't… leave," he says. "You're not allowed to leave."

"I won't," says Steve. His hand comes up, touching Bucky's hair, and then when he makes a soft noise, Steve moves his fingers in deeper, running through his hair. "I'm not leaving, Bucky, I swear it." And silently he begs, _You can't leave me either_ , because when Bucky dives into that dark, terrible place, it feels like he's disappeared somewhere Steve can never follow. "Whatever you want," he murmurs, shifting up to press his lips to Bucky's forehead.

**Author's Note:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://paperweave.tumblr.com/)


End file.
